Part 11 (1/2)
My mobile phone rang. I answered and was immediately a.s.saulted by the acerbic voice of Alex Morrisey, calling from Strangefellows. As always, Alex did not sound at all happy with the world, the universe, and everything.
”Taylor, get your a.r.s.e over here at warp factor ten. A certain Pen Donavon has just turned up in my bar, looking like death warmed over and allowed to congeal. He's clutching a DVD case like it's his last life-line, hyperventilating, and crying his eyes out because he thinks the Removal Man is after him. He appears to be suffering from the sad delusion that you can protect him. He says you're the only person he can trust, which only goes to show he doesn't know you very well. So will you please come and get him because he is scaring off all my customers! Most of whom have understandably decided that they don't want to get caught in the inevitable cross-fire. Did I mention that I am not at all happy about this? You are costing me a whole night's profits!”
”Put it on my tab,” I said. ”I can cover it; I'm on expenses. Sit on Donavon till I get there. No-one talks to him but me.”
I put the phone away and smiled at Bettie. ”We're back in the game. Pen Donavon has turned up at Strangefellows.”
Bettie clapped her hands together, kicked her heels, and jumped down from the wooden shelf. ”I knew you'd find him, John! Never doubted you for a moment! And we're finally going to Strangefellows! Super cool!”
”You'll probably be disappointed,” I said. ”It's only a bar.”
”The oldest bar in the world! Where all the customers are myths and legends, and the fate of the whole world gets decided on a regular basis!”
”Only sometimes,” I said.
”Is it far from here?”
”Right on the other side of town. Fortunately, I know a short cut.”
I took out my Strangefellows club members.h.i.+p card. Alex handed out a dozen or so, in a rare generous moment, and he's been trying to get them back ever since. Not that any of us are ever likely to give them up. They're far too useful. The card itself isn't much to look at. Just simple embossed pasteboard, with the name of the bar in dark Gothic script, and below that the words You Are Here, in blood-red lettering. I pulled Bettie in close beside me, and she snuggled up companionably. I still wasn't used to that. It had been a long time since I'd let anybody get this close to me. This casual. I liked it. I pressed my thumb firmly against the crimson lettering on the card, and it activated at once, throbbing and pulsing with stored energy. It leapt out of my hand to hang on the air before me, turning end over end and crackling with arcane activity. Bright lights flared and sputtered all around it. Alex had paid for the full bells and whistles package. The card expanded suddenly to the size of a door, which opened before us. Together, Bettie and I stepped through into Strangefellows, and the door slammed shut behind us.
I put the card back in my coat-pocket and looked around. The place was unnaturally still and quiet, empty apart from a single drunk sleeping one off, slumped forward across his table. I knew him vaguely. Thalla.s.sa, a wizened old sorcerer who claimed to be responsible for the sinking of Atlantis. He said he drank to forget, but it was amazing how many stories he could remember, as long as you were dumb enough to keep buying him drinks. Everyone else had clearly decided that discretion was the better part of running for the hills, and that the combination of Pen Donavon, his DVD, and me in one place was just too dangerous to be around. Even the kind of people who habitually drink at a place like Strangefellows have their limit; and I'm often it.
Donavon was easy to spot. He was sitting slumped on a stool at the bar. No-one else could look that miserable, beaten down, and s.h.i.+t scared from the back. He peered round as Bettie and I approached, and almost collapsed off his stool before he recognised me. He was just a small, ordinary-looking man, no-one you'd look at twice in the street, clearly in way over his head and going down for the third time. Up close, he looked in pretty bad shape. He was shaking and s.h.i.+vering, his face drawn and ashen, with dark circles under his eyes as though he hadn't slept in days. Perhaps because he didn't dare. He couldn't have been half-way through his twenties, but now he looked twice that. Something had aged him and hadn't been kind about it. He clutched a long, shabby coat around him, as though to keep out a chill only he could feel.
He looked like a man who'd seen h.e.l.l. Or Heaven.
Alex Morrisey glared at me, and then went back to half-coaxing, half-bullying Donavon into putting aside his brandy gla.s.s and trying some freshly made hot soup. Donavon remained unconvinced. He watched, wide-eyed, until Bettie and I were right there with him. Then he sighed deeply, and some of the tension seemed to go out of him. He emptied his gla.s.s with a gulp and signalled for another. Alex put aside the soup bowl, sniffed loudly, and reluctantly opened a new bottle.
Alex owns and runs Strangefellows, and possibly as a result, has a mad on for the whole world. He loathes his customers, despises tourists, and never gives the right change on principle. He also had his thirtieth birthday just the other day, which hadn't helped. He always wore black, because, he said, he was in mourning for his s.e.x life. (Gone, but not forgotten.) His permanent scowl had etched a deep notch between his eyebrows, right above the designer shades he always affected. He also wore a snazzy black beret, perched far back on his head to hide his spreading bald patch. I have known clinically depressed lepers with haemorrhoids who smiled more often than Alex Morrisey. Though at least he doesn't have to worry when he sneezes. I leaned against the bar and looked at him reproachfully.
”You never made me hot soup, Alex.”
He sniffed loudly. ”My home-made soup is full of things that are good for you, including a few that are downright healthful, all of which would be wasted on a body as ruined and ravaged as yours.”
”Just because I don't like vegetables...”
”You're the only man I know who makes the sign of the cross when confronted with broccoli. And don't change the subject! Once again I am left clearing up the mess from one of your cases. Like I don't have enough troubles of my own. b.l.o.o.d.y eels have got into the beer barrels again, the pixies have been at the bar snacks, which they will live to regret, the poor fools, and my pet vulture is pregnant! Someone's going to pay for this...”
He broke off as Pen Donavon suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm. There was so little strength left in him it felt like a ghost tugging at my sleeve. His mouth worked for a moment before easing into something like a smile, and there were real tears of grat.i.tude in his eyes.
”Thank G.o.d you're here, Mr. Taylor. I've been so afraid...They're after me. Everyone's after me. You have to protect me!”
”Of course, of course I will,” I said soothingly. ”You're safe now. No-one's going to get to you here.”
”Just keep them away,” he said pathetically. ”Keep them all away. I can't think...I've been running from everyone. Either they want to pressure me into selling the Recording, or they want to kill me and take it. I can't trust anyone any more. I thought I'd be safe, once I'd made my deal with the Unnatural Inquirer, but I was ambushed on my way there. I've been running and hiding ever since.”
He let go of me and looked back at the full gla.s.s of brandy before him. He gulped half of it down in one go, and Alex winced visibly. Must have been the really good stuff, then. I looked at Bettie.
”Could someone in your offices have put the word out on Donavon coming in with the DVD?”
”For a percentage? Wouldn't surprise me. None of us are exactly overpaid at the Inquirer. And our Reception phones are always being tapped. We debug them at the start of every working day, but there's always someone listening in, hoping for an advantage. After all, we hear everything first. We're noted for it.”
”I should never have recorded the broadcast,” said Donavon. He was sitting hunched over his brandy gla.s.s, as though afraid someone would s.n.a.t.c.h it away. ”It was all a ghastly mistake. I was trying to contact the other side, yes, but I never thought...My life hasn't been my own since. And I'd certainly never have tried to sell the Recording if I'd known it would destroy my whole life.”
”You saw the broadcast,” said Bettie, leaning in close with her best engaging smile. ”What did you see?”
Donavon started shaking again. He tried to speak, and couldn't. He squeezed his eyes shut, and tears ran down his trembling cheeks. Alex sighed heavily and topped up the brandy gla.s.s again. He smiled nastily at me.
”All these drinks are going on your tab, Taylor.”
I smiled right back at him. ”Do your worst. Expenses, remember?”
”Well,” said Bettie. ”You will get expenses if we deliver the DVD.”
I looked at her. ”What? What do you mean if? Nothing was ever said about my expenses being conditional!”
”This is the newspaper game, sweetie. Everything's conditional.”
I scowled, and then had to stop because it was upsetting Donavon even more. I moved away down the bar and gestured for Alex to lean in close. ”You can bet some of your recent customers will be out on the streets now, spilling the beans about who and what can be found in Strangefellows. Which means we can expect unfriendly visitors at any moment. Better lock the doors and slam down the shutters. Where are the Coltranes?”
”Out the back, doing exactly that,” said Alex. ”I can think for myself, thank you. My defences will keep out all but the most determined; but if anyone does get in, the resulting damage will also be going on your tab. I'd insure against you, but apparently you're cla.s.sed along with Acts of G.o.ds and other unavoidable nuisances.”
”Call Suzie,” I said. ”I think we're going to need her help on this one.”
”d.a.m.n,” said Alex. ”And I just had the place redecorated.”
Bettie slipped her arm through mine and turned me round to face her. ”I hate to sound disappointed,” she said, ”but I am, maybe a bit. I mean, darling, this isn't at all what I expected. It all looks so...ordinary. Well, ordinary for the Nightside. I was hoping for something more...extreme.”
I refrained from pointing out the disembodied hand scuttling up and down the bar top. (Alex accepted it in payment for a bad debt.) The hand was busy polis.h.i.+ng the bar top and refilling the snack bowls. Yet another good reason not to eat them, as far as I was concerned. Alex objected on principle to giving away anything, and it showed in his choice of snacks. Does anyone actually eat honeyed locusts any more? The vulture's perch was empty, of course, but there were other things to look at. Lightning, crackling inside a bottle. Bit hard on the s.h.i.+p, I thought. A small featureless furry thing, that sat on the bar top purring happily to itself, and occasionally farting. Until the hand grabbed it up and used it as a rag to polish the bar top. A small cuspidor of tanna leaves, with the brand-name Mummy's favourite. All nice homey touches.
”I want a drink,” Bettie announced loudly. ”I want one of those special drinkies you can only get here. Do you have a Maiden's b.l.o.o.d.y Ruin? Dragons' Breath? Angel's Tears?”
”The first two aren't c.o.c.ktails,” I said. ”And that last one is actually called Angel's Urine.”
”Which was selling quite well,” said Alex. ”Until word got around it wasn't so much a trade name as an accurate description.”
Bettie laughed and snuggled cosily up against me. ”You choose, darling.”
”Give the lady a wormwood brandy,” I said.
Alex gave me a look, and then fished about under the bar for the really good stuff he keeps set aside for special customers.
”I do like this place, after all,” Bettie decided. ”It's cosy, and comfortable. It'd probably even have atmosphere if there was anybody else here but us. Ah, sweetie, you take me to the nicest places!”
She kissed me. As though it was the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps it was, for other people. I took her in my arms, and her whole body surged forward, pressing against me. When we broke apart, Alex was there, pus.h.i.+ng a gla.s.s of wormwood brandy towards Bettie. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up with an excited squeak, sipped the brandy, and made appreciative noises. Alex looked at me. I looked at him. Neither of us mentioned Suzie, but we were both thinking about her.
And then we all looked round sharply at the sound of heavy footsteps in the entrance lobby upstairs. They were heading our way, and they didn't sound like customers. Alex cursed dispa.s.sionately.